sadhoc:

the worst part of having a doctor tell you to “reduce stress” is that it is legitimately impossible for the vast majority of people. quitting your stressful job will result in stressful homelessness, stressful starvation, and stressful poverty. cutting of stressful family and friends will result in stressful loneliness, stressful drama, and stressful accusations. logging off the stressful social media will also result in stressful loneliness, being stressfully out of the loop, and stressful boredom. ignoring stressful politics will result in stressful lack of preparation for stressful curtailing of your personal liberties and stressful cuts to every public service you use. it’s impossible to not be stressed unless you’re literally some kind of richtok nepo baby, and even those weirdos have the “stress” of managing their servants and deciding which olympic sized swimming pool on their stressfully massive property is better for hosting their stressful sweet sixteens.

really being told to “reduce stress” or that your illness is caused by stress is being told “suck it up and get out of my office. also it’s technically your fault for living in the real world”

So fucking true

ugh

….for the past several years I have been split between two rather dismal observations

1. Telling me that my health problem is “caused by stress” without doing anything to stop the stress, is like telling me my infection is “caused by bacteria” without prescribing antibiotics

2. but, if the problem really is caused by stress, the only alternative to this uselessness would be to have doctors prescribe solutions that would actually fix the problems… which would require giving doctors control of the entire government and economy… and at this point they really have not earned my trust enough for that